THE SECRET HISTORY OF
PHOTOGRAPH: MAXIMILIAN STOCK LTD/GETTY IMAGES
TODAY’S GLOBAL ICE CREAM market is worth over £40 billion, but its path to triumph involved long periods stuck in the historical deep-freeze.
Judging from Egyptian tomb frescoes, the ancients had cottoned on to the idea of mixing ice with fruit juice. The basic conundrum – that people most desire a frozen treat when the local weather is least favourable to producing ice – could not easily be cracked until recent times. For centuries, refrigeration generally meant harvesting, hauling and storing ice before it melted. Little wonder that iced foods and drinks remained luxuries for most.
The first recorded example of a frozen dairy product – as opposed to early slushies – comes from China’s Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD). One emperor had his men laboriously churn ice, flour and buffalo milk. His chosen flavour, camphor, did not catch on. Though the story of Marco Polo bringing a recipe for ice cream back from China is most likely a myth, Italy went on to become a pioneer of gelato. In 1558, Giambatista della Porta wrote a book called Natural Magick, in which he added salt to ice to lower its temperature still further, and thus froze a glass of wine placed in the mixture. The basic technique had been discovered.